‘Flirting with disaster’: Why a crawfisherman is fighting the Bayou Bridge pipeline

Meche holds the oil and gas industry responsible for the steady destruction of a way of life that depends on the bounty of our nation’s largest river swamp. The industry dodged regulations and built hundreds of pipelines throughout the basin. The construction left behind mounds of dirt—known as spoil banks—that have systematically destroyed the water quality and created so much sediment that crawfish and other living organisms suffocate.